>>21922Oh I hated that video. There were many things that were so grossly oversimplified to the point of misinformation, he also skipped a lot of nuances which is somewhat understandable because this is meant to be a video for a general audience, but his explanation of the axiom of choice, the main topic of the whole video, was so off. The reason we have an axiom of choice isn't because algorithms are incapable of producing random results (or "math formulas can't give random results. we need rules to choose" as he said) because one can simply using existential instantiation, something built into logic, to pick an arbitrary element from a non-empty set. The problem arises from the fact that picking an arbitrary element from infinitely many non-empty sets would require you to use existential instantiation infinitely many times, which is not built into logic and would require you to write an infinitely long proof or use transfinite induction (which is a theorem of ZF + axiom of choice and thus you would be simply using the axiom of choice indirectly).
There are many other things I could criticize in that video but I don't want to waste too much time on this.
By the way, this gross simplification and skipping of nuances is something I've noticed in a lot his recent videos too, especially the physics ones like feynman's quantum path integral formulation and noether's theorem, and it makes me wonder if all his videos are like this, but I simply don't notice because I only have an deep understanding of math and physics and not the other topics he talks about.
I know that I should be treating his videos as more entertainment than actual education and information, like all pop-sci content out there. They're made for a general audience so there is going to be some contortion of the facts to make things interesting/clickbait-y and a huge lack of rigor so that everyone can (only somewhat) understand and follow; however, a lot of the people watching take these videos as an actual substitute for textbooks and lectures and it is this process that creates a lot of the pseudo-intellectuals out there (think of a redditor) and gives fuel to the arrogance of cranks and midwits. I don't want to be an elitist but if you want to actually learn something, use actual academic sources, and do not speak like a know-it-all because you listened to neil degrasse tyson's rambl
Post too long. Click here to view the full text. 
